Maybe you thought LEGO was just for kids. But for 19-year-old Liam Mohajeri Norris and his mother Emily, those little plastic shapes may win them a title, a trophy, and a cool $100,000 on in the “LEGO Masters” reality competition series.
And, Liam admits, “I do have the dream of working for LEGO.”
Roll tape back to 2004, when UVA grads Scott and Emily Norris moved back to the Charlottesville area with their new family. Emily, who was homeschooling Liam and his brothers, was on the lookout for creative toys, and scored a huge bin of used LEGO at a Waldorf School yard sale. The rest, as they say, is history.
Emily remembers Liam starting out with open play, and then working on sets to discover more ways the blocks could be used. Then came MOCs (LEGO-speak for “my own creations”—there’s a lot of jargon in serious LEGO work). His parents got into the scene as supporters and “artistic advisors,” says Emily.
Then, Liam recalls, “We had a FIRST LEGO League team that my mom coached.” At 13, Liam started a LEGO Design Club that met at the local library. Then he and his mother taught a LEGO design class at the Community Homeschool Enrichment Center; Emily, who has a master’s degree in education, says LEGO play is a good way to do team building with middle schoolers. Soon Liam was running a LEGO workshop for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Virginia on Cherry Avenue, and working out new designs with the online LEGO community.
The family moved to Tucson in 2021, but the LEGO work continued. Emily designed a studio space in their home, with places for Scott, Liam, and his brothers to work on their individual projects. Liam, now a freshman at the University of Arizona majoring in film and television, has his own YouTube channel called Brixter where he posts LEGO tutorials. He recently posted a design to LEGO World Builder, an online portal where builders can pitch their designs to other enthusiasts—and to LEGO.
What is the appeal that’s kept him playing LEGO for more than a decade? “I like that it uses both the creativity and the engineering parts [of my mind],” says Liam, citing his interests in both robotics and math. And the weekly challenges on “LEGO Masters” aren’t just making cool shapes. In the Wild West challenge, the competing teams had to design a LEGO bull rider that could survive riding on an actual mechanical bull—and look good doing it. In the Jurassic Park episode, the teams had to construct a dinosaur action scene that could stand up to live special effects—Liam and Emily (the first mother-son team in the series’ four-season run) won that round.
Liam finds working with LEGO both relaxing and therapeutic. “I like that creating with LEGO is physical, not just digital—being able to look and interact with what I’m making,” he says. “I enjoy thinking about how other people interact with it.”
And that’s a lot of people—one site estimates about 400 million worldwide (including APOL, “adult players of LEGO”) have tried their hand with the little bricks. Two million viewers are keeping an eye on the “LEGO Masters” competition.
What’s his next MOC? “A lot of the time, I’m just playing around,” says Liam. “I may have an idea, other times I’m just experimenting.” Once that led Liam to build a lion carrying a tiny African village on his back, made of more than 5,000 LEGO bricks; next time, who knows what he’ll create.
